


The Draft

by StalwartNavigator (Fallwater023)



Category: Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Boats and Ships, Book: A Wizard of Earthsea, Culture Shock, Dancing and Singing, Education, Families of Choice, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hogwarts, Majorca, Mentor/Protégé, Mentors, Music, Ocean, POV Switches, Roke, Seafaring, Wizarding World, Wizards, Worldbuilding, is apparently located in Earthsea, lazy continuity, lazy narration, loose grasp of canon, so there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 14:09:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3212015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallwater023/pseuds/StalwartNavigator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little-known fact: Albus Dumbledore is a very conscientious writer. Even in personal missives, he often runs through several drafts</p>
<p>Littler-known fact: Albus Dumbledore was exhausted on the night of the Potters' deaths. </p>
<p>The Dursleys make good their escape for the island of Majorca, where Harry meets a strange man going by the name of Sparrowhawk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Draft

**Author's Note:**

> Here goes nothin'. We all knew I had to write at least one of these. You can't resist wanting to give poor Harry a better childhood, right? Won't comply with Earthsea canon beyond _A Wizard of Earthsea_. 
> 
> I own none of this, by the by.

It was late. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore’s eyes had long since given up stinging and burning and now felt terribly swollen. He’d gone through three candles, an oil lamp and two bags of lemon drops, and still had no idea what to write. His first draft was too blunt, his second too vague, his third simply redundant, his fourth needlessly dramatic, his fifth rather ridiculously flowery, his sixth too terse...He’d lost count around number seven. And these blasted quill pens took so long to use, it really was ridiculous. 

Steeling himself and popping another lemon drop, Dumbledore set quill to paper.This next draft would really be the last. It would. 

_Dear Mr. and Mrs. Dursley,_

_It is with great regret that I must inform you of the death of your sister and brother-in-law, Lily and James Potter, in the line of duty. As their closest living relatives, the custody of their son, Harold James, thus falls to you._

_While it is a terrible imposition in a time of bereavement, I must urge you to take him in as your own and guard him most carefully - as her last act, Lily left a protection on her son which remains active only so long as he lives in the home of a blood relative. This is fortuitous, as Harry, being the only survivor of an unknown magical event which has killed Voldemort (a wizarding war criminal and terrorist whom you may know as He-who-must-not-be-named), may become a target of attack. While the protection is effective against those followers of Voldemort who would seek to do him harm, I would advise that you keep him concealed from the Wizarding World, as many of Voldemort’s followers have been pardoned by the Ministry and remain at large in our community._

_Harry will be enrolled in Hogwarts in eleven years’ time, at which point he will be under the protection of our faculty. Until then I must stress that his greatest safety - and yours - is secrecy and concealment._

_Best regards, and sorrow for your loss,  
Albus Dumbledore_

XXX

Petunia leaned on the doorframe and sighed, feeling a knot of tension in her chest slowly unwind. It had sprung to life when she finished reading that letter and persisted as she and Vernon cycled through screaming fights, frantic planning, and endless curtain-twitching. 

_It won’t be so terrible,_ she thought to herself, forcing some cheer. _Like a long vacation._ She and Vernon had been planning to acquire a vacation home in Majorca anyway, and when _the letter_ and his promotion had come through at the same time, this solution almost seemed a blessing. The four of them would be safe from the freaks, and it needn’t be a Siberian exile. Majorca was rather foreign, but there were some shops in Palma and the mainland was a hop, skip, and boat ride away. 

Vernon was able to work from an office in town, thank goodness, so some semblance of normalcy remained in their lives - she still kept up the round of cooking and cleaning and planned to ingratiate herself with the local expatriates so she could get in some quality gossip time. Mrs. Lutchens, the retiree down the road, had invited her up to tea next Thursday, so there was that. Then there was Dudley - and _the boy_ \- to take care of. 

He was a freakish sort of infant. It was undeniable. She felt such a strange knot of terror when _the boy_ cried, it couldn’t possibly be her own. _The boy_ gave her the willies when he was too long in the same room as her. While normally she would dismiss such a sensation as the byproduct of nerves or perhaps grief for her sister (freak Lily may have been, but she was _Petunia’s_ freak), this boy was a freak and the son of freaks. 

She took great pains to ensure that her Dudders was exposed to his freakishness as little as possible. 

As the boy grew, so Petunia’s fear of him grew. It was a comfortable sort of fear, and made a reassuring structure for their days. She would wake, and so would the freak. Petunia and her family ate in one room, the freak in another. When Dudders played in the house, the freak worked in the yard. When Dudders played in the yard, the freak worked in the house. When Dudders went to the good school in Palma, the freak went to the little school in Sant’Angelo with the fishers’ children. When Dudders had homework, Petunia helped do it for him. When the freak had homework, he went to the musty little Sant’Angelo library. Petunia and Vernon, when he was home, slept in one bedroom, and Dudders in the other. The freak’s nursery was in the back closet, and later the cramped space became his bedroom. 

So the two families lived in one house, the beginning of one family and the end of another, without ever really occupying the same world. 

XXX

It was Harry’s birthday. He was celebrating alone, as usual, kicking along the seashore in his raggedy hand-me-downs. The slight chill of the early morning didn’t much bother him. The sun would burn off the mist and warm him up soon enough. 

It was an ordinary day. Harry would spend perhaps an hour on the beach, until the sun no longer touched the horizon, and then go up to the house and begin the normal round of chores and hiding from Aunt Petunia’s sharp tongue and sharper hand. It wasn’t good or fun, but it was expected. There was some comfort in the ordinary. 

And then the boat made land. It wasn’t the first boat he’d seen in his eight years on Majorca; the fishermen would often let him sit with them on the docks in town, learning to tie up a vessel, stow an empty net, or tell a good fish from a bad one. It was the first boat he’d seen made of silver light and pale driftwood, with eyes painted on and a tattered sail that still held wind. The thing moved smooth, unnaturally smooth for such a small boat. It gave Harry a headache to look too closely at that movement. It was like somebody had taken a little kid’s _idea_ of how a boat on the ocean worked and made it real, ignoring, in the process, the notion that someone who was watching it might know better than that. 

Harry wasn’t stupid. Yes, Aunt Petunia and Dudley and Uncle Vernon said he was, but he had eyes. He’d seen fishing craft about this size pitching and swaying in the roll of the surf. This boat did not act like a boat. 

And the man crewing it did not act like a sailor. He hadn’t so much as touched the sail-cleats, or the rudder, or the oars, and he hadn’t looked at the tell-tales - with a jolt, Harry realized that there were no tell-tales, no bits of ribbon tied to the jib sheet so this strange man could check the wind’s direction. He didn’t hop out of his vessel into waist-deep water and push it ashore; in another head-hurting move, the boat simply kept going until it was smoothly grounded. 

The stranger did step onto the pebbly sand with a line, but instead of tying up to a post or a boulder he simply left the loose end lying on the sand. Then again, the aft end of the boat wasn’t rocking in the waves the way it should be. So maybe it wouldn’t drift away if he left it untied. 

It was still lazy, though. Harry didn’t like it. 

Now ashore, the strange man looked around with an air of satisfaction. He didn’t seem to notice Harry, who was carefully backing up towards the scrubby hills but still in plain view of the water. Surely he’d seen that someone was on the beach from way out at sea. But his attention certainly seemed occupied by his very strange clothes, which he flapped and tugged at like he was looking for something in a pocket that might or might not exist. 

“Ha!” the man made a very low sound of satisfaction, drawing out a tiny furry creature from the hood of his long coat. It was small enough to fit in the man’s palm, and a pretty leaf-brown, with big eyes in a small fox face. Man and creature stared at each other for a long time, and the creature solemnly licked the man’s nose with a tongue as brown as its fur. 

Then the two, man and creature, set off along the shoreline. Harry relaxed - and the man paused, turned around as though he’d forgotten something. 

“You know, a strange wizard is much more likely to answer your questions if you ask him,” He remarked as though to the air, and turned and walked again. 

Harry watched, frozen, for a few seconds. Then he scrambled to his feet and ran after the man who would change his life.


End file.
